Saturday, February 22, 2014

Fail to Plan and Plan to Fail

Meal Planning is something I both love and hate. While it can be fun, it can also be a huge pain in the ass. It hard for me to think of exactly what I want during the week. You know I'm a foodie, and some days my tastes are insane, but those are usually the days I end up having something I shouldn't necessarily have.

When I do my weekly planning, I make sure to include snacks, days I plan to eat out, and a variety of options just in case I want to switch days. I prefer to eat everything as written because I have planned out a specific amount of carbs each day.

If I don't plan out my week like this, I feel completely lost about what to take out for dinner. It can definitely be a pain because you have to figure out everything you want to eat a week in advance, but it does end up being totally worth it. I've just gone grocery shopping and I've basically done all the work for the week. Now it just comes to the actual cooking, which I enjoy (unless I have play practice that day, then Its a race to the finish line).

Here is an example of my menu and grocery list for this week. It begins today, Saturday.

I've tried to plan my weekly meals electronically, but I just love the feel of the paper beneath my hand. Nothing like good old fashioned colored pens and happy printables. I have several that I consider my "Go To" printables, but you can scour pinterest and find hundreds. Here are a few that I prefer (the link to the actual website downloads are blow the pictures).

This one isn't as pretty as the one above, but I think it's more functional. I can see my menu for the week and list the groceries right underneath. Obviously this is my favorite seeing as how I used it in the pic above.